We use it everyday to help with our service cases and help resolve issues. We are a company that is in many states, and this program helps with keeping all the data in one place and allows upper management to see project progress all in one place. It also helps us sort jobs out based on their status.
Pros
tracks progress
keeps statuses
allows management to view progress
Cons
integration with other software could be better
add in AI
easier to click link to CRM
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft Power BI works well for tracking service orders and for keeping track overall. If you work in construction or even in customer service you would find this software useful. If you have a large scale operation, Microsoft Power BI also helps figuring out where you are at as far as work completed is. Super helpful.
Currently in the construction industry, and the company is a bit newer to visualized data and reporting software as powerful as Microsoft Power BI is. It's used for Operational data (Viewpoint, Bid 2 Win, Power Platform, etc.) and specific IT-focused data (trends, anomalies, general aggregates). We bring business units together and show them how their actions affect others. Both time & money. Incorrect data or antiquated processes can be hard for users to see. However, they have cascading effects that can feel like normal business until you see the full picture. That's one of the coolest things that Microsoft Power BI does for us: gives us that full picture. More recently, we've convinced our VP of Finance to let us bring in data from Planful. We'll elevate the financial data they already know and trust while tying in data from other platforms/databases. Planful is incredible software, but it doesn't tie into our other data sources as gracefully. Their drill downs are very focused, and he's excited to get a broader grasp of the what and why.
Pros
Options for data source connections are immense. Not just which sources, but your options for *how* the data is brought in.
Constant updates (this is both good and bad at times).
User friendliness. I can get the data connections set up and draft some quick visuals, then release to the target audience and let them expand on it how they want to.
Cons
Over the years, I've always asked for and wanted one seemingly minor improvement, but it's such a weakness for a reporting platform... A built in function to show Deltas. It just doesn't exist, so you have to do some very interesting workarounds to do it yourself.
Constant updates. There are direct vendor connections that are only functional on older versions of the software, but then I manage other reports on latest versions to get greater functionality. Sure, this is on the vendor in most ways, but the update cadence certainly complicates things.
This is most every company at this point, but I very specifically don't want "AI" in every little thing I use, and feel like it's getting rather forced at this point.
Likelihood to Recommend
Well suited: -Visualizing structured databases -Showing people how seemingly unrelated actions can affect other things -Showing data-driven opportunities for improvement Less appropriate: -Deltas... I swear to biscuits -If your are wanting things to look like Excel (just use Excel) -If you have very unstructured data with no possibility of interconnectedness
VU
Verified User
Employee in Information Technology (Construction company, 1001-5000 employees)
We have used Microsoft Power BI to create basic custom programs that can pull data from one or more locations, as well as sync updates back. We created a job tracker to log time spent within individual departments on particular jobs. Prior to using Microsoft Power BI, we were not logging this information, and we had no clear estimate of the amount of time spent. Now we have better insight into our overhead labor costs and can create better time schedules.
Pros
Integration with other Microsoft products
Customization
3rd party support for popular applications
Cons
Without a tech background, Microsoft Power BI can be difficult to learn
Even with a tech background, Microsoft Power BI can be tricky to implement
Microsoft's pricing schedule and licensing is not overtly clear
Likelihood to Recommend
My recommendation would depend on my colleague's proficiency with technology and basic programming skills. Although Microsoft Power BI has low-code, no-code solutions, it can still be tricky and frustrating to understand without a good tech background. It would also depend on their specific goals for Microsoft Power BI since there may be better, more user friendly, and more "out of the box" solutions.
VU
Verified User
Employee in Information Technology (Construction company, 51-200 employees)
Instead of using one big Excel file that gathers different types of data from various sources we decided to switch to using Power BI, which we found could be integrated easily with our existing business environment, while providing advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, enabling us to create customized dashboards. The old approach with Excel files was not reliable and very time-consuming when it comes to maintenance.
Pros
Data analysis.
Access levels management.
Graphical display possibilities.
Cons
Very often desktop app works slow.
More edit possibilities while using the model in web browser.
Likelihood to Recommend
Definitely well suited for areas like Finance and Operational KPIs. I really can't think of any department that could not benefit from it. Probably less appropriate when you have many categories like customers or products and want to show all of them in a detailed way on one graph. Possibly the view in the report can be not clear enough.
We needed a way to pull large amounts of data from our construction management software and create reports that we could use to set and measure expected metrics for project team performance. Being able to track these and create configurable reports that company executives could view from anywhere and see historical performance helped us set and track company performance goals.
Pros
Configurable reporting figures that can be set and adjusted to meet your needs.
Historical data comparisons and progress tracking.
Ease of access. Being able to access the reports online is awesome.
Being able to dive into the data and break it down from high levels to small is helpful as well.
Cons
There is a bit of a learning curve to fully use the software.
It requires a pretty strong data analysis background to be able to use.
Troubleshooting data issues is not super easy.
Likelihood to Recommend
I think it is well suited to pull large masses of information into a usable report that can be used to analyze trends and current standings. It is a much more powerful, configurable, and easier to use Excel pivot table. I don't think it would be as appropriate to use for smaller data if you only have a few hundred points of data; Excel is probably still better to use.
Power BI is being used across the whole organization to organize our data and show data in a way that is effective for decision making and helpful for upcoming projects and winning new work. The storytelling that PowerBI provides is very valuable, along with the ability to collaborate on dashboards with coworkers.
Pros
Storytelling with data.
Easy to use.
Beautiful graphics.
Cons
If you are not familiar with DAX it can be a bit difficult to create measures, but you can easily find solutions.
It can sometimes take a while to refresh the data.
Likelihood to Recommend
Power BI is well suited for reports that were formerly in Excel. They will be presented in an easy to use and view fashion. Additionally the visuals are interactive making for a pleasing experience on the end user side. Overall, it is a great tool for data analysis, and being able to view data in different ways and make ups.
We use Power BI to support multiple areas within our organization. We have created personnel dashboards for our HR team and recruiting teams. We have financial dashboards for our Finance and AR teams. We have analytics dashboards for our operations teams. It solves so many issues and is so user friendly. The main area of improvement has been getting consistent data into the hands of our employees company wide rather than relying on spreadsheets that business units would keep internally.
Pros
The ability to provide consistent and standard reporting
The ability to incorporate multiple data sources into a single source.
The analytics within Power BI are incredibly powerful
Cons
More options for external sharing of dashboards would be great.
Steep learning curve depending on your background.
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft Power BI has been an amazing service for our organization. The ability for any of our users to see a single dashboard at any time, even from mobile devices, is head and shoulders above where we were before. Now we can send consistent analytics and reporting out throughout our business units, from executives all the way down to our field personnel.
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology (Construction company, 10,001+ employees)
We use Microsoft Power BI to gather data and present it from our project management software Procore. It is used by two people in our organization to present data to our upper management. It helps to let our leadership have a real up to date high level overview of where each of our projects stand in terms of budget, schedule and many other metrics.
Pros
Data retrieval/mining
Data presentation/visuals
customization
Cons
Ease of use - this tool could be much more intuitive in its design
Likelihood to Recommend
We love the Power BI integration, so we have seen it built out for specific integrations with specific other software, like Procore, successfully, with little to no effort required by the end user. We feel that if you have data that you would like to dig through and present to a large group in a meaningful way, Power BI is for you.
As we are trying to understand the overall health of the organization there are various metrics around revenues, costs, etc that we want to be able to slice and dice. We have some contracts that are such severe outliers (both positive and negative) that they can greatly skew our numbers. We use PowerBI to better understand our metrics and quickly manipulate the inputs into our reports.
Pros
Easy to create beautiful charts that make the data very easy to understand.
Ability to quickly add/remove certain contracts from the dataset and see the differences with and without these contracts.
Mobile view is really nice too!
Cons
Can be difficult to import certain data sets like MySQL that is on-prem.
Takes a bit of getting used to using. Once you're using to it you look like a genius with how fast you can create reports.
Pricing can become a bit much at scale.
Likelihood to Recommend
PowerBI is great for scenarios where you have raw data and quickly want to get insight into the trends within that data. If you're a small company or working on a small team that will consume this data you can move quite quickly and have everyone on the same page.
I wouldn't recommend using this to share data across a larger organization unless price isn't an issue. It can become expensive when you're talking 50+ users.
We are using Microsoft Power BI throughout or entire organization. Our finance department was the first group to start using Power BI. The ability to display the data easily and with ease of understanding is the key to Power BI. Users can quickly take data from a variety of data sources and display in an easy to read user friendly format. Power BI allows our users to see important data timely without scrolling through a bunch of Excel files.
Pros
Ability to connect to many different data sources and provide a easy to read graphical output.
There is a free version that comes with our O365 subscription that suits most cases and a paid version for the power users.
Many different chart types to choose from and active selection criteria makes the charts user interactive
Cons
Power BI lacks in its ability to integrate directly into AAD to allow you to customize reports based on logged in user.
Power BI has issues when trying to access multiple data sets for a report. The data needs to be manipulated outside for Power BI before being used in Power BI.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you are a Microsoft shop and have users that live and die by Microsoft Excel, Power BI will be a great addition. It is easy to get started and provides powerful professional looking reports without a high cost associated. Power BI is a great solution and easy to implement business intelligence solution.
